Recently, music distribution services for distributing music data via the internet have been increased. The music distribution service distributes, as music data, encoded data obtained by encoding a music signal. As an encoding method of the music signal, an encoding method has been commonly used in which the encoded data file size is suppressed to decrease a bit rate so as to save time during download.
Such an encoding method of the music signal is broadly divided into an encoding method such as MP3 (MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) Audio Layers 3) (International Standard ISO/IEC 11172-3) and an encoding method such as HE-AAC (High Efficiency MPEG4 AAC) (International Standard ISO/IEC 14496-3).
The encoding method represented by MP3 cancels a signal component of a high frequency band (hereinafter, referred to as a high band) having about 15 kHz or more in music signal that is almost imperceptible to humans, and encodes the low frequency band (hereinafter, referred to as a low band) of the signal component of the remainder. Therefore, the encoding method is referred to as a high band cancellation encoding method. This kind of high band cancellation encoding method can suppress the file size of encoded data. However, since sound in a high band can be perceived slightly by human, if sound is produced and output from the decoded music signal obtained by decoding the encoded data, suffers a loss of sound quality whereby a sense of realism of an original sound is lost and a sound quality deterioration such a blur of sound occurs.
Unlike this, the encoding method represented by HE-AAC extracts specific information from a signal component of the high band and encodes the information in conjunction with a signal component of the low band. The encoding method is referred to below as a high band characteristic encoding method. Since the high band characteristic encoding method encodes only characteristic information of the signal component of the high band as information on the signal component of the high band, deterioration of sound quality is suppressed and encoding efficiency can be improved.
In decoding data encoded by the high band characteristic encoding method, the signal component of the low band and characteristic information are decoded and the signal component of the high band is produced from a signal component of the low band and characteristic information after being decoded. Accordingly, a technology that expands a frequency band of the signal component of the high band by producing a signal component of the high band from signal component of the low band is referred to as a band expansion technology.
As an application example of a band expansion method, after decoding of data encoded by a high band cancellation encoding method, a post process is performed. In the post process, the high band signal component lost in the encoding is generated from the decoded low band signal component, thereby expanding the frequency band of the signal component of the low band (see Patent Document 1). The method of frequency band expansion of the related art is referred below to as a band expansion method of Patent Document 1.
In a band expansion method of the Patent Document 1, the apparatus estimates a power spectrum (hereinafter, suitably referred to as a frequency envelope of the high band) of the high band from the power spectrum of an input signal by setting the signal component of the low band after decoding as the input signal and produces the signal component of the high band having the frequency envelope of the high band from the signal component of the low band.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a power spectrum of the low band after the decoding as an input signal and a frequency envelope of an estimated high band.
In FIG. 1, the vertical axis illustrates a power as a logarithm and a horizontal axis illustrates a frequency.
The apparatus determines the band in the low band of the signal component of the high band (hereinafter, referred to as an expansion start band) from a kind of an encoding system on the input signal and information such as a sampling rate, a bit rate and the like (hereinafter, referred to as side information). Next, the apparatus divides the input signal as signal component of the low band into a plurality of sub-band signals. The apparatus obtains a plurality of sub-band signals after division, that is, an average of respective groups (hereinafter, referred to as a group power) in a time direction of each power of a plurality of sub-band signals of a low band side lower than the expansion start band is obtained (hereinafter, simply referred to as a low band side). As illustrated in FIG. 1, according to the apparatus, it is assumed that the average of respective group powers of the signals of a plurality of sub-bands of the low band side is a power and a point making a frequency of a lower end of the expansion start band be a frequency is a starting point. The apparatus estimates a primary straight line of a predetermined slope passing through the starting point as the frequency envelope of the high band higher than the expansion start band (hereinafter, simply referred to as a high band side). In addition, a position in a power direction of the starting point may be adjusted by a user. The apparatus produces each of a plurality of signals of a sub-band of the high band side from a plurality of signals of a sub-band of the low band side to be an estimated frequency envelope of the high band side. The apparatus adds a plurality of the produced signals of the sub-band of the high band side to each other into the signal components of the high band and adds the signal components of the low band to each other to output the added signal components. Therefore, the music signal after expansion of the frequency band is close to the original music signal. However, it is possible to produce the music signal of a better quality.
The band expansion method disclosed in the Patent Document 1 has an advantage that the frequency band can be expanded for the music signal after decoding of the encoded data with respect to various high band cancellation encoding methods and encoded data of various bit rates.